Terracotta, Orange, Cassia and Cedarwood

This week has been a frantic rush, with everything, seemingly, close to near-disaster. Things have broken down, animals have cut themselves on glass, children are tired and race for the crayons and the paper when they get home to unwind from all that Christmas Fun, which is so headlong that we get no chance to stand and look at anything.

I miss looking at things when the pace is such that I cannot. I miss looking at my favourite four trees on the walk I take to the supermarket. I miss snail shells and lichen – because it’s hard to see them for all the giant Father Christmasses and twinkly lights. Who knows.

But I do like it when I finally get my children home for christmas, and all the cooking is done, and the Last Big Shop has been shopped. (The Last Big Shop is on Thursday. Last Christmas I forgot coal and milk, this Christmas I am hoping the forgetting has already been done, since I turned up dutifully at our bus stop to collect my children, having forgotten they were watching Snow White with the school and were not returning for another two hours).

I have been making gifts for teachers, and some to sell. They defy description, really. Dangly nick-nacks is perhaps the best I can do, and I make them every year. Last year I made them with Suffolk Puffs, lots of bay leaves, and raffia. The year before that I made them with coarse brown string, bay leaves and vintage buttons. This year I made them with terracotta stars, and dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks and dried chillis. And bay leaves, of course. I used wire to thread them, which made things easier, although I missed the twineyness of the string, and I added some brownish glass beads, because I found some in my box, and they gleamed nicely at me.

One of the advantages of making things year on year is that you can troubleshoot. I’ve always left these to dry in a box with orris root before, and used cloves and star anise somewhere in the mixture to give them a warm, herby scent. This year I used Cedarwood and Orange Essential oils on the terracotta stars, and this worked beautifully with the slight smell of Bay.

Now they are waiting to be packaged and wrapped and given, and I can take care of the first two by the fire, tonight. Tomorrow there are two dundee cakes and some fudge to be made.

Stockings, buttons and beads.

the Well, I finally got a batch of one-off, handmade Christmas Stockings sewn, pressed, finished and trimmed. Which is good, because I can send them off to their respective owners and get back to Other Things (making two dundee cakes, designing a funky hat, and I really want to make myself some yummy long mittens). I will post a link to my Christmas Stocking pattern and sewing instructions from the ‘techniques’ page in due course. There’s a link to the easy fudge recipe up on there now, too.

But the stockings. Three are made in a cool cotton tartan that I found in a charity shop, and trimmed variously with wire/beaded crochet, a hand-felted bead (sewn with glass bugles) and a (my favourite) bright swiss-roll felt bead. I want to make some more of the swiss roll felt beads, and perhaps sew them onto hair clips, or something like that. Any ideas with what to do with them would be very welcome.

Two stockings are in a Christmas Cat craft fabric (again new, but sourced from a secondhand shop). I’ve kept the trimmings simple on those, with just vintage buttons front and a small bead inside.

The sixth stocking is a rather lovely Rose and Hubble pink remaindered square, trimmed with green ribbon and another mother-of-pearl vintage button. This one’s my favourite – it’s something about the pink and green that I like.

What news? Well, Christmas is in full joyous flow, with two fetes, a party, a special assembly, a play and a Victorian Market in the past week alone. The Victorian Market was more like a Victorian Puddle, but I picked up some goodies, and will post about them soon. And we had mince pies, with brandy butter (oh, the loveliness of Brandy Butter), and mulled wine. I want to buy one of those spikey old-fashioned umberellas just for the fun of rainy day fetes.

Introducing the Semolina Twins…

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No, not Vanilla and Oatmeal, of course - Cous-cous and Halva. But we’ll come to them later. They should be first, but the picture of the Halva isn’t as nice as the ones of the soap, and I couldn’t ask my five-year old to wait before eating it until Natural Light Came Out.

So, moving swiftly forward, as well as the lovely Semolina, I also flirted with her cereally sister, Oatmeal, making Vanilla and Oatmeal soap to give as Christmas Presents. Soap-making the easy way is fun. For this, I used opaque pure soap base, melted in a double boiler, and added cocoa butter, apricot kernel oil, vanilla extract and oatmeal. The yellow bits are calendula (that’s English Marigold to thee and me) petals – purely for show in this instance. If you’ve got dry skin, then this soap is really rich and moisturising. I use it as a face soap – it lathers beautifully, and it smells gorgeously wholesome but warm, too.

Now for that Semolina shout-out. Cous-cous is one of our teatime staples, but Halva I tried tonight for the first time – in search of a starchy pudding to warm up the children after a hard day at school and a long walk from the bus. It was a resounding success. A bit over-sweet and cloying for my taste – next time I’ll cut down on the sugar a bit – but the rosewater and cinnamon stick provided a really delicate combination of flavours which complimented each other perfectly. I may try popping a Vanilla pod in with the cinnamon stick next time.

The recipe, should you so desire to make Halva (it is very easy, and requires little more than sugar, milk, semolina and butter), I shall include on the recipes page (which is going to get awfully long, but I shall try to think of an alternative – I’m still building my website, but I could always stick the recipes up there in a ‘holding’ capacity, perhaps?)

The rest of my travails have been reasonably successful, too, which makes me sound like Ms McSmuggery Horrid, but usually at least 1 in every 10 of my travails ends in disaster, so be reassured. To the left is a sneaky peek of a work-in-progress – Christmas Stockings.

Unsurprisingly I make a lot of these at this time of year, but I’m particularly pleased with these two. I’ll post proper pictures of my latest batch when I’ve trimmed them with vintage buttons and shiny satin ribbons. I’m taking orders for next year, would you believe?

Also the Turkish Delight, although not perfect (have you ever tried whisking boiling sugar syrup into stiff cornflour-paste mixture?), is at least an approximation of delightful. And very pink. I shall blog about it when I’ve photographed it, and decided where to put all these recipes. Which people are reading. I know this because WordPress, in all its wisdom, has a Useful Stats Page. Aha.

Chocolate fishes

Marshmallow and chocolate kebabs, cream fudge, and other yummy things. It’s the time of year when I boil up sugar, do things with an orange that don’t stop with juicing, and make confectionary for Christmas presents.

Why do this? Well, firstly it’s cheaper – far cheaper, to make these things yourself. Secondly it’s fun, and thirdly you know the provenance of the items. I’m not sure it’s super-green because of fuel economy, but it’s not terrible, at least, especially if you save and recycle packaging.

So far I have made cream fudge (the recipe, if you want it, is here), barley sugar and crystallised orange peel (dipped some in chocolate, too – well, not actually dipped, more popped them in the pan and stirred them about, pulled them out, left to dry, rather than the ’skewer each piece on a cocktail stick’ tidy purist method). I’ve made mincemeat (very, very easy, and you can check for what kind of nasty fats go in there), and I’ve covered marshallows with chocolate for stocking fillers.

Tomorrow, barring adventures, I make Turkish Delight, which is such a delicate thing to make, and, like all these things, incredibly easy.

The barley sugar has been taken to friend’s houses for gifts (it’s vegan, which is useful), and the marshmallows have been put away. The crystallised chocolatey oranges have been hidden in the ‘cupboard where the ceiling is coming down’ and the fudge…

the fudge…

The fudge I have eaten. This is bad. There was one bit left, about half an hour ago. I photographed it. Then I ate it. It is (or rather was), and you can trust an expert here – Very Lovely Fudge. It sits on a nice vintage plate that I found for 10p, and which originally was made for a Brexton Hamper.

I have also made a small embroidered landscape with which I know not what to do next. I don’t want to embroider it any more, and so I shall, ummm…paint it?

Cake Bag and Scarf Set

Well, I’ve been fairly busy the last few days, despite sneezy children and sneezy self. Hot Lemon and Honey helped, as it always does.
Some of the pictures show Rosie’s Cake Bag. That’s her own home-made Christmas present, and inside it will be a little baking set, with a rolling pin, board and assorted shaped biscuit cutters. So, it, hopefully, really will be a Cake Bag, or at least a Biscuit Bag (but biscuits aren’t as pretty as cakes, so we’re just going for the path of least resistance here).

Also shown is a sample of some of the long stripey crotcheted scarves I make (and last year, sold). I’ve had a couple of commissions on these, and so made up a sample, which I may or may not put up on Etsy (prolly won’t, because Etsy is slow moving for me, and also I’ve a focus on prints there, rather than textiles, although I specialised initially in textiles, silk-painting, and mixed media.

The blue tree thing (aargle to more Blue Trees) is a multi-media picture (collage, silk, machine embroidery) that I started work on aaages ago, and then, in a fit of grumpy pique, stuffed behind a radiator (how grown-up of me) and forgot about it. Well, didn’t actually totally forget about it, but forgot completely where it was. Well. Here it is, re-surfaced, and I’d love to do some more work on it, and might well be able to because I have found a really good secondhand sewing machine that I think might be up to the not inconsiderable job of machine embroidering through several layers of paper, silk and paint. The current machine I have is a nice basic modern Brother, but it’s just not strong enough to happily embroider, although it’s fine for basic sewing. The one I go to collect tomorrow is a 1950’s sleek green mean machine, and doesn’t do any fancy stitchery, but is more suitable for my nefarious sewing purposes. So wish me, and it, luck, please. It’s also rather beautiful, and I shall call it ‘Mavis’ or ‘Deirdree’. Shan’t decide until I get it home.

I am thinking of building myself a proper website again, rather than relying on Etsy, because I haven’t done too well on Etsy, and if I’m going to have an online shop, I might as well pay commission on the payments software as on Etsy. And I can then put up applique commissions (frou-frou, but I loooooved making that bag) and fabric commissions, as well as print commissions and portraits, for sale, like the bag and the scarf above, because, to be fair, I tend to sell more through commission than from straight prints anyway. Ho hum. Not sure what to do, but I think I’d like to move forward in some way. Will prolly end up hopping around sideways, though.

Rosehips and Sunflowers

This week I finished a cat picture (which I’m really pleased with, and lets hope that its recepient will be, too), and went fruit-picking from the hedgerows, where I’ve gleaned at least two pounds of rosehips, and lots more blackberries. I was planning on making some blackberry wine, but can’t decide whether to make blackberry vinegar instead, and invest in a wine ‘kit’ for my first attempts, so I can get a feel for the winemaking process first.

I re-read bits of ‘The Doors of Perception’ (Huxley), but only on-line, because I’ve mislaid my copy of the book, alas, and also a really interesting pamplet published by ‘The Guardian’ which transcripted a brilliant interview with Francis Bacon, which you can also read bits of online, here.

What else? Well, lots more bus journeys, some successful fabric-hunts (see picture), and my new brown boots are starting to become less painful. This morning, at the Car Boot Sale, the people-dressed-as-fairies were out in force, which was fun. I found some treasure, too, which was also fun…a damask tablecloth, a tin of linking monkeys, a green jumper, some bellis daisies, and a yummy smelling sage plant. Oh, and lots and lots and lots of wooden coathangers, which I’ll paint, I think, or do something with, although I only really bought them because they were part of a job lot which included a really pretty 1950’s tea plate. And if you’ve ever walked two miles with a whole heap of wooden coathangers poking into your leg at every stride, you’ll know what my shins feel like now.